Full Plan: The USFG (United States Federal Government) Should Substantially Increase its NIB (National Infrastructure Bank) Investment in the US

Rules:1) This is a debate about whether the government "should" do this or not; no arguments saying "this would never be done by congress"2) If you don't answer an argument in any way in a round, the person who made that argument automatically wins it.

Regional banks are key to the banking sector, according to an FRS (Federal Reserve System) report (http://www.kc.frb.org...).

Trust in the banking sector is also down, preventing public-private cooperation, according to a telegraph article from August of this year.

"Over eight in 10 people think that banks have not done enough to change the banking industry to prevent another credit crunch from happening...seven in ten people say that the banking “culture” hasn’t got any better since 2007."(http://www.telegraph.co.uk...)

Public trust in the banking system is key to its recovery. Here are two sources:

According toFSA (Financial Services Authority) chairman Lord Turner, "Banks must focus on restoring the public's trust in their role." (http://news.bbc.co.uk...)

According to Larry Elliot, the economics editor of the Guardian, "Overmighty banks lost the people's trust - they can't recover without regaining it" (http://www.guardian.co.uk...)

"We may see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people." That'sOve Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change Institute (GCI). (http://www.sify.com...) These findings were also published in the science magazine.

And, advantage two is that the NIB would prevent the collapse of the economy.

The economy is weak now.

According to a NYTimes article, "Commerce Department released [a report] Thursday showing the economy had expanded at an annual pace of just 1.3 percent in the second quarter, barely above stall speed... months of disappointing-to-dismal economic reports." (http://www.nytimes.com...)

NIB improves the economy in three ways:

First is infrastructure; it is undermining the US economy in the status quo and is best fixed by the NIB.

"When travelers from abroad come to this city, the financial and cultural capital of the world's richest nation, two dilapidated and depressing airports greet them. The clogged runways, the leaking roofs, the maddening taxi lines, the lost travelers bumping into each other -- all these depredations are just part of flying the friendly skies to JFK or LaGuardia." This is just one example of america's terrible infrastructure, according to Huff Post. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com...)

"Infrastructure investments supported by the NIB will allow theU.S. to meet future demand, reduce the waste currently built into the system,and keep pace with competition from global rivals." (http://www.bernardlschwartz.com...)

Second is stimulus.

Infrastructure spending is a uniquely beneficial form of stimulus. "Unlike most other forms of stimulus, infrastructure spending benefits the economy in two ways: First, it creates jobs—which, because those jobs put money in consumers' pockets, spurs demand. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that infrastructure spending is a cost-effective demand stimulus as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of budgetary expenditure.Second, the resulting infrastructure enhancement supports supply and growth over time. By contrast, underinvestment not only hobbles U.S. competitiveness but also affects America's national security as vulnerabilities go unaddressed... a 74% increase in annual spending on transportation infrastructure alone would be economically justifiable." (http://hbr.org...)

"The Great Depression showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse...A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward...wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely...The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang." (http://www.forbes.com...)

Nuclear winter causes climate change thousands of times worse than global warming, which causes extinction of all life on earth. (http://inesap.org...)

Solving nuclear war outweighs all possible disadvantages to the plan; it's do the plan or die

Extinction from nukes is by far the worst thing that could possibly happen to the human race. "If the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face extinction."(Jonathan Shell, The Fate of the Earth, pp. 93- 96)

First off, my opponent’s source is almost silly. It’s actually focusing on one regional bank, the Zions Bank, which is apparently lagging. It mentions in one sentence how larger banks outperform regional banks, which is pretty obvious since they’re much bigger companies. My opponent has not proved at all how the banking system is suffering.

Regional banks are key to the banking sector, according to an FRS.

Banks are like businesses in the way that they provide a service. All banks, like all businesses, have the ability to fail, and then will be replaced by another bank or company. This idea that these smaller banks are “key” to the economy is basically a fallacy.

This is like trying to say that the government should prop up “Bob and Son’s Grocery” over Wal-Mart even though Wal-Mart would have better prices, products, quality, and service than this other fictional grocery mart.

But again, even Wal-Mart has the ability to fail if it starts to change and become more undesirable to the public where it could possibly go under- another business would soon take the place of Wal-Mart on the market that would meet the demands of the public.

"Over eight in 10 people think that banks have not done enough to change the banking industry to prevent another credit crunch from happening...seven in ten people say that the banking “culture” hasn’t got any better since 2007."

According to FSA (Financial Services Authority) chairman Lord Turner, "Banks must focus on restoring the public's trust in their role."

According to Larry Elliot, the economics editor of the Guardian, "Overmighty banks lost the people's trust - they can't recover without regaining it"

Okay, now my opponent has found sources which are actually directly talking about banks in the United Kingdom. Here’s another exert from one of the articles:

"The parliamentary banking inquiry must produce proposals for fundamental change to the culture and practices of the banks and put the best interests of consumers back at the centre of reforms.”

Now, if you were to be talking about the United States, which is what we are supposed to be talking about, the banking “culture” has not changed since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was established. Through the practice of Fractional Reserve Banking, the Fed is inflating our currency. Since its creation the United States dollar has been devalued by 96%. And since the United States dollar is essentially debt, credit crunches will continue to occur regardless of changes the Fed tries to make.

"The "best funded" research projects in Ecology receive in reality just a fraction of the money they need, critically limiting their results."

My opponent has now pulled from a source that is focusing on ecology, not environment solutions. The government does not invest in ecology (that being studies of the relationships between organisms in their natural environment) because it literally does nothing to help find environmental solutions. Environment solutions are focusing on new energy sources, theories of global warming, ect. Not how animals behave.

Green energy solutions are funded heavily in the United States, and they’re usually associated with heavy failures as well, as when Obama invested billions of taxpayer’s dollars into green energy companies that went bankrupt soon after.

“The truth is that the problem is widespread. The government’s picking winners and losers in the energy market has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and the rate of failure, cronyism, and corruption at the companies receiving the subsidies is substantial. The fact that some companies are not under financial duress does not make the policy a success. It simply means that our taxpayer dollars subsidized companies that would’ve found the financial support in the private market.”

And, advantage two is that the NIB would prevent the collapse of the economy.

How can it prevent the collapse of the economy? Even with the installation of an NIB, economic collapses can still happen. Not even the Federal Reserve can prevent economic collapses, (although that is supposed to be one of its main goals)

Global warming leads to extinction.

Uuum, red herring, much? This is irrelevant and has nothing to do with why an Infrastructure Bank should be established.

Economic collapse causes nuclear war…Solving nuclear war outweighs all possible disadvantages to the plan; it's do the plan or die

My opponent is using logical fallacies. For one, this is a red herring, for it does not pertain to the argument. Second, my opponent is appealing to emotion and using scare tactics. Thirdly, my opponent is using a false dilemma argument. For there are many ways one could argue to prevent nuclear war. The NIB is not the only solution to nuclear war.

Arguments against the NIB

The NIB would further increase the debt of the United States since the NIB calls for borrowing money on the global market to pay for the infrastructure projects.

"It is real savings that funds the enhancement and the expansion of the infrastructure. An enhanced and expanded infrastructure permits an expansion in the production of the final goods and services required to maintain and promote individuals' lives and well-being."https://mises.org...

Right, so basically money is free. No fear of inflation or anything like that. Just start spending an extra 500 billion a year. And the initial capitalization? Who funds that? Also, the engineers and all the capital goods will magically appear, prices of concrete and steal will not go up, favored interests won't be served, etc.